Northcliffe’s Sentinel Sunday is to close at the end of the month.

The award-winning newspaper, launched as a sister paper to the six-day-a-week The Sentinel in April 2000, will publish its last edition on September 30.

Poor circulation and a failure to attract enough advertising to allow it to become a profitable title in its own right have been blamed for the move.

The company is not looking to make any staff redundancies.

In a joint publisher’s statement, Staffordshire Sentinel News & Media managing director Tim Saunders and editor-in-chief Mike Sassi said that, after a strategic review, the company had reluctantly decided to close the newspaper.

They said: “Sentinel Sunday has achieved much since it was launched in April 2000. It won a series of industry awards, including UK Press Gazette Daily/Sunday Newspaper of the Year for 2001 and 2004, Best Designed Newspaper in Europe 2004 and Midlands Newspaper of the Year.

“However, Sentinel Sunday was never able to match the circulation of its sister, daily newspaper, The Sentinel. Similarly, it never attracted the advertising that would have enabled it to become a profitable niche title in its own right.

“In July 2006 Sentinel Sunday was relaunched in tabloid format. It also received substantial investment in its content and promotion. Despite this, both circulation and advertising revenues have failed to live up to expectations.

“We are unable to envisage a sustainable, long-term future for Sentinel Sunday.”

The statement added that the closure of Sentinel Sunday would coincide with a vigorous programme of reinvestment, with many popular features transferred from the Sunday title to the five-edition daily Sentinel newspaper.

The Sentinel’s Friday ‘Going Out’ supplement will be relaunched, while a new Saturday ‘Staying In’ section, with eight pages of local nostalgia, will also be introduced.

Monday’s football coverage will be increased, and in October a glossy, monthly lifestyle publication, The North Staffordshire Magazine, will be launched.

The Sentinel and Sentinel Sunday are produced from a joint newsroom, and current Sentinel Sunday editor Paul Dutton is also assistant editor of the daily paper.

Mike Sassi told Holdthefrontpage: “I would hope that there will be no staff redundancies in the newsroom.

“Obviously there is freelance material in the Sunday paper which will no longer be needed.”

Sentinel Sunday was launched as the first new Sunday paper of the millennium, and was originally a white broadsheet with news and features, wrapped around a pink business and recruitment section. There was also a green 24-page sport tabloid inserted into the centre.

A year ago the paper relaunched as a tabloid, but ABC results released last week showed its circulation had dropped to 11,886, down 9.6 per cent in six months. The Sentinel currently sells 64,685 (Mon to Fri). Do you have a story about the regional press?
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